There is a possibility that you could brick your NAS with these instructions. Please make sure that you read the entire page carefully. Some HD-HG300's cannot be flashed with OpenLink or FreeLink

Because of a perceived increase in bricked HD-HG300's at a certain point in time, some people came up with the theory that there is a series of HD-HG300 LinkStations out there which are somehow inherently broken and can't be flashed. This is a theory, there is no proof of this. The thought is that some series of the 300 gigabyte HG Linkstations will always be bricked if you attempt to flash them with OpenLink or FreeLink, because these are thought to be defective. Kuroguy has revived one of these bricked boxes via JTAG, so if you brick your box, all is not lost. The serial numbers below are not number ranges, they are single serial numbers where the last three digits have been anonymised.

The theory says you have have one of these LinkStations if your Serial Number is below:

15803350910xxxx

45803351010xxxx

45803351011xxxx

458011650810xxx

458011650910xxx

458011650911xxx

45801650910xxx

Background

Because of a perceived increase in bricked HD-HG300 at a certain point in time, some peole came up with the theory that there is a series of HD-HG300 LinkStations out there which are somehow inherently broken and can't be flashed. This is a theory, there is no prove of this, others than that the people who "discovered" it want it to be true.

An alternative explanation is that the particular LS became popular at about the same time and sold well. Many people who didn't know what they where doing, and who couldn't follow instructions ("Disable all firewalls ...") tried to flash their shiny new LS. Instead of admitting they weren't up to the taks they came up with the "some series must be broken!" excuse, and use isolated observations (defect flash prom in a single LS), to explain the theory. The serial numbers which are given as part of the theory are not number ranges, they are single serial numbers where the last three digits have been anonymised.

You decide. The "some series must be broken!" theory details follow.

Current State

For some reason you cannot flash these HD-HG300 LinkStations with custom firmwares OpenLink and FreeLink. However the original firmimg.bin can be flashed via JTAG...maybe because it is smaller. Normal flashing via the Firmware Updater will create a brick.Really? So how did this guy [1] manage to produce his 4th brick in a row with a stock firmware?

You always are able to install FreeLink/OpenLink to a LS1/LS2/HG if you pull out the HDD and manually flash the LinkStation's firmware by connecting it to a workstation running Linux and untarring the tmpimage.tgz which is stored inside the image.dat of all firmwares.

Future Plan

UBoot is able to load a kernel from /boot on /dev/hda1, so you won`t desperately need a telnet + ftp-enabled firmimg.bin to upgrade the kernel in flash.